A Russian passenger plane with 224 on board crashed in Egypt’s Sinai desert. Egyptian air traffic control lost contact with the airliner shortly after it took off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to head to Russia.
A Metrojet/Kogalymavia A321 en route from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, crashed near el-Arish in the north of Sinai.
According to Sputnik news, “A source in Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency told RIA Novosti that Kogalymavia Flight 9268, an Airbus 321 carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members, took off from Sharm El-Sheikh at 3:31 GMT and vanished from the radars after 23 minutes of flight”.
According to a security official at the scene, the Russian airliner is completely destroyed and all of its passengers are most probably dead. The plane went down in a mountainous area in central Sinai and poor weather conditions have made it difficult for rescue crews to get to the scene, the officer said. Survivors and bodies of those on board will be flown to Cairo, he told Reuters.
